I too have adopted a relatively simple approach to assessing and measuring the resolution of a digital camera as described in my FZ50 report which is available for download as a 6 MB PDF file from here.

As discussed in Section 2 of that report, due to the effect of the edges of the lines of a black and white grid partially overlapping adjacent pixels, the resolution of a line pair, i.e. one black line and one white line, requires three pixels, i.e. 1.5 pixels per line width. Consequently the maximum resolution of a digital camera can be estimated with reasonable accuracy by dividing the number of pixels in the height of the sensor by 1.5.

Thus for the FZ200 which has a 4000 x 3000 pixel sensor the maximum resolution would be estimated to be 2000 lines per picture height, LPH. That value is within 5% and 10% respectively of the vertical resolution values for the JPEG and RAW images in the DPR FZ200 review.

Jimmy

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J C Brown

Jimmy,

With your most recent stepped-baseline chart, where you select the smallest line in which one E has all 5 bars (B-W-B-W-B) visible, it seems to me that "perfect" zero-diffraction optics would yield one-pixel-per-line resolution (i.e. 1500 B-W pairs in the 3000-pixel high FZ200 sensor). The 1.5 pixels per line calculation (1000 B-W pairs...) would apply if your criterion were "the smallest line in which all the Es have all 5 bars visible).